The Separate Threads, A Tangled Knot
by indigo96
Summary: Kagome, Inuyasha, Sango, Miroku, and Sesshomaru are all strangers in the same town. Their threads of fate entwine as they become tied unwillingly to the wealthy Naraku. Kag/Inu San/Mir Sess/Rin
1. In Which Kagome Finds A HalfDemon

Kagome wasn't the type of person to constantly take charge and burn bridges, but when she walked past the alleyway where four demons were hassling a single white-haired one, she knew she had to do something. Something about the confrontation seemed more intense than a regular fight, and she had the feeling that if she did nothing, things would end very _very_ badly. She glanced around the street to see if anyone else noticed the fight, too. It was ten o'clock on a Monday in the summertime. All the usual adult traffic was safe working in their air conditioned offices, leaving the street nearly bare.

The four demons were catcalling in low voices, saying things Kagome couldn't hear but could tell were offensive to the silver headed demon. His ears were pressed flat against him, like an angry dog. Kagome squirmed, feeling the extremely tense atmosphere.

The lone silver haired demon finally said something lowly, but ended very loudly in, "the FUCK UP!"

Kagome braced herself for the inevitable impact. A brown and scabby-looking demon shoved his shoulder, hard, and the silver demon stumbled. His face turned slightly toward her, and she realized he was about her age. She took a step into the alley before remembering that she was a simple seventeen-year-old girl, that she was not remarkably strong, and that even if she _were_ strong, it would still be impossible to fight off four demons at once.

Her legs twitched, begging to run and do something, but she stayed planted where she was. Her fingers yanked her cell phone out of her jeans pocket.

The boy popped up from his stumble and landed a punch on the Scab. He went flying in a brown blur. A split second later, the other three jumped on him, grabbing his face and his neck. He went down quickly, and the demons kept him on the ground, kicking him mercilessly and repeatedly. One of them stomped on his face, and the crack of his breaking nose was matched with the sound of his head slamming against the cement.

Before Kagome even realized, she was already halfway towards them, sprinting like a maniac and screaming like a banshee. The demons paused and looked at her with confusion. She continued to run at them, swinging her large purse wildly.

The demons didn't move and she ran into the closest one, who had pale skin covered in blue markings. She thumped against the demon and fell smack onto the ground. He hadn't even budged, Kagome noted frantically. The demons simply stared at her, and then at each other.

"Boss never told us to take care of the interferers," a slightly bent over one said, his spindly arm reaching up to his head to scratch with a twig-like finger.

"Usually they tell us specifically to take care of 'em," the pale one agreed, "Y'know, not let 'em live if anyone sees anything."

"Think we should kill her?" the scab asked.

_I'm_ _right_ _here_, Kagome wanted to point out. She knew they could easily catch her if she tried to run away, so there wasn't much point when or where they would discuss her death, but still…_why did I do this again?_ she wondered hopelessly.

The fourth demon, in a do-rag, deliberated. "He only told us to rough him up. He never said to kill the guy. So why kill the witness?"

The group of demons nodded with furrowed brows in a great contrast to the intense faces they had when they were beating up the boy. If Kagome's life weren't in danger, she would've laughed.

The pale demon sighed and looked at the boy behind her, who Kagome guessed was unconscious. She couldn't turn around to see him without taking her eyes off the demons, and it was killing her. "I guess we 'roughed him up' enough. This was our worst gig yet." The group turned to leave. "I think we should have a 'must kill policy' in our services," the demon proposed.

"We been through this," the Scab said, "nearly three quarters of our business comes from-"

He glanced back at Kagome, remembering she was still there. In the blink of an eye, he was right in front of her. His face was inches from her own, and a bumpy hand came up to her cheek. "You tell a soul 'bout this," he growled lowly, his breath hot and damp on her face. She held her breath. "I pull those pretty eyeballs from their sockets, okay? I know what you look like, how you smell. I can find you easy. But I won't if you don't tell, 'kay?"

Kagome nodded stiffly. "Okay," she whispered, and they were gone.

She inhaled a shuddered breath and turned to the boy. Blood was gushing from his nose; it covered his face grotesquely. Her hands fumbled around the ground absently, looking for something to stop the blood flow. The contents of her oversized purse were scattered all over the alley. Like a kid on 'home base' playing don't-touch-the-lava, Kagome kept her feet crouched in place at the boy's side and crawled her hands out to a nearby tampon, as if he would disappear if she moved away from him. She snapped back and very tenderly probed the boy's nose, waiting for the crushed pulp to give. It didn't.

She gasped softly. "It's already healed!" she marveled.

Kagome undid the wrapping and pushed the tampon up his left nostril, which was the only one bleeding. Aside from his long silver hair, his sharp-looking incisors, and a cute pair of ears on the top of his head, the boy looked rather human.

"You're a _half_-demon, aren't you?" Kagome murmured, surprised. You never saw many of those around town. Humans and demons stuck with their own, for the most part. Interrelationships between the two kinds were generally frowned upon.

The boy continued to lay motionless, and after staring blankly at him for a second or two, Kagome really began to panic.

"What to do?" she muttered, "What do I do…"

She patted her sides to feel her pockets empty. _Where is my phone?_

"What to do?" she mumbled, taking one last worried glance at the unconscious boy before getting up and scanning the alley for her phone or a passerby.

From what she could see, the street was still bare. She felt a pang of despair.

Noises vomited nervously from her throat as she blindly searched for her phone. "Umm…ahh…s'okay, s'okay…uh…"

Kagome finally spotted her phone, ran to pick it up, and stumbled back to the boy's side. She flipped the phone up and began to dial 911 when a large hand swiped it out of her grasp. The hand tightened around her phone until it crunched and popped into a broken shame of its former self.

"_Hey_!" she bellowed, startled. The half-demon was awake, and he was glaring at her. His eyes were a mesmerizing amber color that she noted and filed away in her brain to ponder later. "Y-you broke my phone!" she stuttered.

The boy's mouth turned down. "…don't call for help."

"I _can't_ you idiot, you just BROKE my phone!" Kagome snapped. "What the hell is the matter with you?!"

The boy blinked, as if mentally listing all the things that might be the matter with him. After a long pause, he said, "You can't call for help. I'll _kill_ you if you call for help."

"What the- are you _nuts_?!" The boy continued to glare stonily at her, and even though he was lying like a bleeding lump on the ground with a tampon up his nose, his blood-covered face and strange eyes were intimidating. "You're hurt! You're going to the hospital, dammit!" Kagome hardly ever cursed, and was startled that she was driven to it.

"_No_. I'll heal, just leave me the fuck alone," he muttered venomously, but Kagome could tell their argument was wearing him.

"I'm staying with you!" she said, mostly because it would annoy him. "You need help. We need to call the police, too, and get those guys who did this to you."

"Like hell you'll call the police!" he said in a raised voice, although his chest convulsed and he began to cough. Kagome rushed to hold his head up. The glare he shot at her was lost in a fit of hacking. When he stopped and pulled his hand from his mouth, it was covered in blood.

"Oh god," Kagome moaned. "Oh go-"

"Don't be such a baby," he snapped in a voice that was raspy from coughing, wiping his hand on his jeans, "It's just my ribs mending back together."

She blanched.

"Don't call the police," the silver haired half-demon went on, shaking his shoulders until she let go of her hands, "Those guys will come after you if you do, and you can't _make_ me go to the hospi-"

"Wait, were you conscious when they threatened me?" asked Kagome lowly, feeling waves of white anger roll through her.

"What? No!" the boy's eyes widened in a believably innocent way, and his breathing rattled; Kagome's anger ebbed with worry. "They threat'nd you?" his eyelids were slowly closing. "I woulda taken 'em…" he took a large breath. "…you're jus...a lil girl…they can't…"

Kagome sighed as the half-demon slid back into unconsciousness. Although he was an ass for breaking her phone, he didn't seem rotten to the core. He seemed pretty desperate about not going to the hospital, and he was right about not going to the police.

She wondered what to do with the guy as she collected her things and put them in her purse. Smiling when she found her wipes, Kagome scrubbed the crusty dried blood off the boy's face. His nose was sprinkled with small freckles, and his face was tan. He was actually slightly attractive, Kagome mused, in a boyish way. _Too bad he's a jerk_.

_But what to do with this newfound jerk of mine?_ He wouldn't want anyone else to get involved, probably. Which meant she couldn't call one of her friends or her mom to pick them up.

_Oh wait, the punk broke my cell phone, anyway. Damn him!_

"What did people do before cell phones?" She complained to a nearby trashcan. _Trashcan!!_

It was large and rectangular-shaped with wheels and a handle to pull it. Perfect. She rolled it over to him and opened the lid. The thick, oppressive scent of trash in the summer heat wafted up to her nose. "Blech!" she moaned. _Lucky there's no trash inside…_

Kagome tilted the trashcan on its side and gingerly tried to drag the boy into it.

"Oomph," she panted. He was heavy. With intense difficulty, she pulled his legs a quarter of the way in. She sat for a moment to catch her breath.

"How much do you weigh, fatty?" she asked him. One of his ears flicked cutely. _Aww!_ Embarrassedly, she put her hand to his soft white ear and rubbed it. He didn't wake. A grin grew on her face and she massaged his velvety ears. "They're so cute!" she giggled.

Suddenly his hand drifted upwards and enclosed gently around her own. Kagome froze. His eyes didn't open, and he gave no indication that he was conscious.

"Kikyo…" he murmured, and gave her hand a small squeeze. His hands were large and strong, and rough with calluses. He had sharp claws instead of fingernails. Kagome shivered, but not out of fear. As tactfully as she could, she wormed her hand out of his grasp.

Kagome shook away the odd thoughts that suddenly filled her mind and finished pushing him into the trashcan. Pushing all her weight into it, she turned it right side up. His knees folded with gravity and his forehead slammed against the slimy side of the plastic.

"Sorry," she whispered. He slid down in an awkward ball to the bottom. Kagome kept the top open so he wouldn't suffocate with the fumes, and pushed him at a snail's pace out of the alley. As she picked up momentum, the boy wasn't so difficult to push.

Once they left the alley, the street-side stores grew closer, and Kagome flipped the lid over the bin in case someone saw from the store windows. "It'll just be for a little while," she promised the trashcan. She hurriedly wheeled him down the road and turned the corner. The street turned residential, and more people populated the sidewalk. She maneuvered awkwardly around them, desperately ignoring their stares.

When the endless steps to her family's shrine came into view she almost broke into a run.

"Kagome! Ka-GO-me!!" a voice called from behind her.

She yanked the trashcan to a stop, and with a twinge of annoyance saw her neighbor, Mr. Mathenly, come jogging towards her. He was a middle-aged busy body, and she knew he would latch onto the strangeness of her pushing around a trashcan like a leech and never let her go.

"Good morning, Kagome! Whatcha doin' with that trashcan?" he fell into a fit of laughter, as if he just made a terrific joke and not an observation.

Kagome was bad at lying, so she took the time to laugh with Mr. Mathenly before answering.

"Oh, ours blew away last night and I finally found it," she said in a gust of words. She shifted impatiently from foot to foot.

"Really? Y'know, I didn't think it was that windy last night. Let me tell you, that night last week (Wednesday I think it was) was just a killer! That thunderstorm near ripped the siding off our house. The wife certainly was not pleased when our 'curb your dog' sign blew away, but what can you do? I-"

"Oh Mr. Mathenly," Kagome tried to sound sorry, "I really need to get to my house. I'm expecting a call from my brother any minute."

"Ah yes. Souta's at camp now, isn't he? What happened to your cell phone?"

Kagome was relieved she wouldn't have to think up a lie. "It's broken."

"Too bad, that's just too bad! Kids these days are so reckless with their things. Not that you're reckless, my dear, just in general. I think AT&T's family plan is-"

"I promised Souta I'd answer after the first ring, so I really have to go," Kagome nearly shouted, turning on her heel and dragging the trashcan behind her at a run.

She chugged up the wheelchair path and thanked the gods she finally made it. In a last shot of adrenaline, she eased the half-demon out of the trashcan, dragged him up the steps, and pulled him onto her bed.

Kagome plunked down on her floor and shuddered a few breaths in and out before her breathing went back to normal. "And I thought I was physically fit!" she laughed to herself.

The boy twitched on her bed, and she studied his face. _Still out_. The only boy that had ever been in her room was her ex-boyfriend, Hojo, who, in the perfect representation of gentleman-ship had announced he "didn't feel right being alone with her in her room without someone to supervise them" only a minute of two after being there, and promptly left.

_What a weirdo that kid was_, Kagome reminisced fondly. _Very polite but so…dull._

She focused her attention back to the half-demon. He had smelly sludge that stained his long, pretty hair and his tan face. One of his eyes had swollen shut, ugly and purple. He had various cuts and bruises on his arms. Blushing, she lifted up his shirt and saw large bruises splattered on his torso. _He's well buil-_

She slammed her hands onto her bedspread. "No! _No_!"

The boy remained in his little la-la land. "What are you, a rock?" Kagome snapped, angry at him for some reason. His ears twitched cutely again. "I'm gonna go get some ice," she muttered to her unconscious guest.

When she came back her head was cleared, and she wrapped the boy in ice packs.

She bandaged his cuts and cleaned the sludge off his face and arms, and was just finishing washing and toweling his long hair dry when she heard the front door slam.

"Oh, poop!" Her mom only worked half-days on Mondays, an important fact Kagome had conveniently forgotten. She tossed the towel on her floor and pushed the small basin of water she was using to clean him off into her closet.

_But what's the point of doing that when you still need to explain the half-demon guy sprawled out on your bed?!?!_

"Uhh…" she slammed her door, ran downstairs, and hoped to distract her mother for as long as possible. _Honestly, how often does she go into your room? Not often._

With that relieving thought in mind, she hopped carelessly into her mother's arms.

"Hey mom!" Kagome chirped, giving her a hug.

"Hey, hon." Mrs. Higurashi pulled out of their hug and pointed to a small wicker shelving unit by the door. "I finally got some shelves for your room. It's so disorganized in there; hopefully these will neaten things up."

Kagome's heart sank. _This can't be happening_.

Mrs. Higurashi picked it up and walked up the stairs. Kagome trailed closely behind her, nervous. "Where do you think it should go? I think we should spend the summer reorganizing your room- it's long overdue for it, and Souta's out of the house, so we'll have no distractions." Mrs. Higurashi made it up the stairs and stepped closer and closer to Kagome's door.

"NO!" Kagome's mom startled. "I mean, can't we chat and have snacks first? I'm kinda hungry. I didn't have lunch yet. God, I'm hungry. And I have to go to the bathroom. Really bad. I want to decide where to put it with you, so I can't be gone. Umm…" she trailed off as her mom blinked at her sudden outburst.

Mrs. Higurashi narrowed her eyes. She turned her back slowly to Kagome and stepped quickly to the bedroom door. She turned the knob gradually, then flicked it away from her. The door flung open and Kagome flinched.

Mrs. Higurashi laughed. "For a second I thought you snuck a boy up to your bedroom," she chuckled, "But that Hongo boy would never go along with something like that. He's so old-fashioned, that boy is."

Her bed was empty. The quilt was patted smooth. There was absolutely no sign of anyone being there.

Kagome laughed hysterically along with her mother. "Hojo, mom, his name is Hojo, and I dumped him last _year_."

"That's right! What a dull boy," Mrs. Higurashi mused. She set the shelves down and left for the bathroom.

In the closet, a stack of icepacks were placed neatly next to the water basin. A warm breeze blew in from her window. She hadn't opened it that day.

"He could've left a note," she sighed to her empty room, but only the wind responded.


	2. In Which Sango Looks For A Job

So, because I hadn't written something for ff in so long, I forgot how to write my authors notes. Which is why there wasn't one for the first chapter. What I wanted to say: This is my story (obviously). I have a feeling it's going to be kind of long, but don't worry, it'll pick up. I hope. (I'm not very convincing...)

I'd like to thank supersmarah, my gloriously considerate lone reviewer. Picture the most wonderful gift basket imaginable, supersmarah. Now give it to yourself. It's a deal, my friend. I'll keep writing.

Please review!

* * *

RIP RECORDS

_Accepting Applications_

"Sounds good," a pretty brunette mumbled to herself after reading the sign, swishing her long mahogany hair behind her back and entering the store.

The walls were lined with shelves of thousands of CDs; little markers peeped out every now and then to indicate what part of the alphabet the customer was looking at. Bins of LPs lined the walls beneath the CDs. The girl was surprised to find the floors were a light hardwood instead of carpet, which gave the little shop a bright feel. She had always figured a record store would be dim, crowded with wannabe rockers, and filled with dingy old LPs that a previous generation had sold in order to make a buck.

An old, crackling blues song was moaning soulfully in the background.

In the back, an employee was sitting behind a glass display case, frowning at his computer. The brunette walked over to him as quietly as she could. For some reason, the fact that the store was empty and the singer was presenting his troubles so plainly made the girl anxious to be as quiet as possible to respect…

_Respect what?_

The moment.

The man looked up from his computer and noticed the girl tip-toeing over to him.

"Can I…help you with something?" he smiled, bemused. He was only slightly older than her; probably a sophomore or junior in college. His teeth were straight and white. He was wearing a purple shirt so dark it was almost black, and it stretched nicely over his chest. His hair was long enough to be pulled into a small ponytail at the back of his head, which gave him an artsy look instead of (thankfully) a trashy look. With the added effect of his earring, the girl figured he could be a model if he wanted to.

She tried not to blush. An irrefutably hot guy just caught her tip-toeing like a dork. And although impressing the opposite sex was not her highest priority, her hormones made it impossible to ignore them all together.

"Ah, yes," she finally said. "Could I have an application?"

His face brightened. He looked thrilled. "Of course!" He pulled a blank application from behind the cash register and handed it to her.

She murmured her thanks and sat down on a nearby chair to fill it out. The only sounds were the scratching of her pen and the blues song in the background. She could tell that the guy had not turned back to his computer yet. He was still watching her. She pressed her pen down harder on the paper and frowned, nervous.

"Not many people fill out their applications on the spot," he said conversationally.

"Really," she hummed absently, filling in her contact information.

He still didn't turn back to what he was doing previously. "Hey, what's your name?"

"Sango."

Why he didn't wait to find out when she gave him her application, she didn't know.

"Sango…" he trailed off.

She waited for him to finish what he was saying, tapping her foot to the almost waltz-y strumming of the guitar.

"You like this song?" he asked.

"I guess," Sango shrugged. "It's the first time I've heard it, so I don't know."

The young man nodded. "It's Tommy Johnson's 'I Want Someone to Love Me'."

"Ah." She knew she wouldn't remember that, and went back to her application.

"I love this song. You know why?"

Sango wondered how annoying it would be if she had to work with a person this chatty. "Why?" she asked, sighing and filling in her previous jobs. _Babysitter, waitress, martial arts instructor, cashier…_

"I think he's plainly saying what everybody thinks."

"Really." _Almost done…_

"Yes. We all," he started to say suggestively, and when she looked up at him he was staring at her intensely, "want someone to love us."

His eyes were almost violet-colored.

_Weird…_"Er, yeah."

"I don't want to brag, but I think I'm pretty good at loving others."

"That's cool," Sango said absently, writing down her references.

"I've kept all my girlfriends satisfied."

_Didn't want to brag, huh?_

"That's…" she didn't know how to respond to that, so she didn't. She stood to hand him the papers. He glanced at them briefly.

"I'm Miroku, by the way." He reached his hand across the counter for her to shake.

He gave her hand a few pumps, and right when she was about to let go he put his other hand on top of them both.

She stared at them. "Er…"

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Sango. I must say, the store hasn't been busy today, so you coming here and wanting to work here…it makes a man happy." He smiled stunningly at her.

"…Okay…"

"You seem like an incredibly sweet girl. You really light up the store. Do you want to go out on a date sometime?" He wouldn't stop smiling.

Stunned, Sango waited fruitlessly to speak after things started making sense. Wasn't he moving a little too fast? A _lot_ too fast?! "Um…I don't know…I mean, I don't know you. I don't really have time to be dating right now, and you're a little old for me…"

"Don't be silly! There's always time for love! And you're eighteen, you're totally legal. I'm only twenty!"

That's_ what he looked at on my application? That horn dog, he planned this from the beginning!_

Sango narrowed her eyes at the man. He looked startled. _God damn pretty boy must not be turned down a lot…_

"No. Thank you," she spat icily, pulling her hand out of his grasp.

The man's face portrayed the heartbroken look of a puppy. "But…you're so attractive…and you have such a nice ass…"

Heat flared to her face, and before she knew it her hand had made contact with the side of his face.

Sango stormed out of the store without waiting to see his reaction, and nearly bumped into a girl dragging a large trashcan.

"Sorry," she muttered, and tore into a jog, thinking the pervert might run after her.

Sango didn't stop running until she reached her apartment. She pushed the door open clumsily and stumbled inside.

"What's with you?" her roommate, Kara, called from the couch.

"Nothing, nothing," Sango panted.

Kara spooned some yogurt into her mouth. "I thought you were job searching."

"I was. I thought you had work."

"My shift's not till 4:30." Kara flipped the channel to a sleazy reality show. "Why are you home so early? I thought you were going to 'search for a job like your life depended on it.'"

"My life _does_ depend on it," corrected Sango.

"Yeah, I know. I can't be paying our rent by myself. Why'd you get fired again, anyway?"

Sango busied herself searching their empty fridge for something to eat and pretended not to hear.

"Sango," Kara called, "Why'd you get fired a-"

"I DIDN'T MEAN TO SNAP AT MY BOSS!!" Kara and she stared at each other for an awkward moment. "I mean, I didn't mean to lose my temper at my boss. He was being sexist."

"You're never going to get a boyfriend with that feminazi attitude of yours. Or a job."

Sango sighed and popped a frozen mini pizza into the microwave. "Don't say that, I need a job. I can't go back to Mom and Dad. They already have enough problems taking care of Kohaku." Her mind wandered to her parents' run-down apartment, always under a cloud of financial worry: Are we raising our kids right? Will we have enough food for the whole month? Her parents had owned a martial arts dojo until Sango was fourteen. When a new, more commercialized chain dojo was built nearby, their little dojo was forced into bankruptcy and closed. Since then, her parents struggled to stay out of debt, desperately trying to find and keep well paying jobs.

Kara was the type of person who mercilessly refused to be sympathetic or pity anyone- Sango's parents were simply poor business people and unsatisfactory workers to her. Kara would have no problem kicking Sango out if she didn't find a job soon, so she shrugged and changed the subject. "And I don't want- or _need_- a boyfriend, so that's not an issue."

Kara rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the television, leaving Sango to eat her lunch in peace. She poured over the newspaper for job openings, finished her pizza, and grabbed her bookbag.

"Heading out again?" Kara asked.

"Yeah. The paper had a few good ads." Sango opened the door to leave, but then turned back to her roommate. "Kara?"

"Yeah?"

"If someone you don't know comes to our door, don't let them in. I don't care how attractive they may look, we're not home."

"What?"

Sango turned on her heel and left. Kara's shouts were muffled by the slamming of the heavy door, and the laugh she let out echoed loudly in the stairwell as she skipped outside.

Her lighthearted mood didn't last long, though. It had been a week and a half since she'd had a job. _Almost a whole paycheck's worth of time…_

Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket, and she smiled when she saw it was her little brother.

"Kohaku!" she sang, her worry sliding away.

"Sango! Wassup?!" his slightly scratchy voice was an instant comfort.

"Oh nothing much, job searching."

"Found any place yet?"

"Not yet," Sango sighed, feeling her despair seep back in. "But never mind that" she dismissed, not willing to let go of her joy just yet, "Why'd you call?"

"I'm bored. All my friends are out of town. So I felt like calling you."

"I'm sorry about that, Kohaku," Sango said sympathetically.

"That's okay."

There was a pause, and she could tell there was something else he wanted. _He's such a shy kid!_ "I'm going to be busy all day, but wanna have dinner together?"

"Yeah!!" he nearly shouted through the phone, but his reserved tone instantly returned, "And…"

"And…?" Sango prompted.

"Can I, um, if it's okay, can I sleep over at your apartment?"

Sango smiled again. "Of course!" Kohaku loved staying at her apartment, in all its run down glory. She had a suspicion it made him feel grown up.

"Thanks, sis! Aw, I'm so excited!"

Sango laughed. "Don't change, Kohaku. There's gotta be at least one sweet adult man in this world, and it's going to be you."

Kohaku asked wryly, "What happened now?"

"Nothing happened, hon. Does six sound good?"

She successfully maneuvered his thoughts away from her male issues, and they made plans for later.

Sango's good mood lasted the rest of the day. The sun beat warmly on her back as she applied at a cheese shop, a convenience store, a kid's party place…and on. Most places weren't even hiring, but she gave them applications anyway. The employees tended to frown at her with a 'I can't believe she's so pushy' look, but Sango was past caring.

Before she knew it, the sun had sunk lower in the summer sky. Sango rushed to apply to the local pawnshop that was on the way to the bus stop. It was a seedy place, but Sango had gone in there on a few occasions to pawn things. From what she'd seen, only a tall, wan-looking man with long, frizzy eighties hair worked the shop. _He could use a worker, right?_

Sango stumbled through the dark pawnshop, made her way to the dirty linoleum counter, and asked the man if he was hiring.

"No." His face was impassive. Not even a smile.

Sango shifted her weight from foot to foot. "Well, are you accepting applications?"

"No. I really don't need help."

She glanced around the cluttered shop, and up at the rickety fan that may or may not propel off anytime soon and chop both their heads off. _I think you need a _lot_ of help…_

"Well, will you accept _my _application?" she probed, giving what she hoped to be a cute smile.

"No."

_God damn it! So I'm not cute! Who cares?!_

Sango danced on her toes, antsy. "Are you sure?"

"Quite sure," the man frowned.

"Tough!" she snapped, slamming her application on the counter. She ran out the door as gracefully as she could without tripping over the mess, and wondered why she had more than one encounter that day where she stormed out of a store.

_You're supposed to be selling yourself to your future employers, not displaying your personality flaws to them!_ she reprimanded herself.

Sango couldn't bring herself to care for long. Kohaku was bouncing with happiness to see her. She took him to a cheap restaurant, where they both pretended it was a very fancy eatery and insisted on using high brow English accents.

"Oh, Sahn-gohh dearest, you _must_ try the blueberry buckle. It's simply to _die_ for."

"Oh, my pearl, if you recommended it, I daresay I'll give it a go."

They fell into fits of giggles all the way to her apartment. They climbed the stairs wearily, and she unlocked the door.

"Wait, sister!"

"What?"

"Let's go to the roof!"

"…Why?" She was tired from walking all day, and was more interested in passing out in front of the TV than anything else.

"I've never been to the top of a building before! Chase scenes in movies…they always end up on the roof!" Kohaku's eyes were bright in the dark stairwell.

"Always?"

"Always."

Sango sighed. "Fine." She tossed his bag inside. She heard the door to the roof above her slam, and laughed. He was already there.

Slowly, she made it to the roof. Kohaku must have run off somewhere else. All she heard were the cars below in the night air. The breeze was gentle. She sighed, and finally felt calm.

She heard Kohaku shout, and jolted back to reality.

"What?" she called.

He ran to her side with concerned eyes. "Sango, look!" Kohaku cried, pointing to the edge of the building.

A girl about her own age was walking at leisurely pace on the half-wall.

Sango gasped.

She wore a long red skirt and a white tank top. Her pale skin glowed almost ethereally in the moonlight. If she were to slip, she'd fall all eight stories. Sango was about to call out to her when the girl stepped, easy-as-you-please, off the building.

"No!" Kohaku yelled.

Sango convulsed forward, but stopped. The girl was standing on the air. Her chest tightened in shock. The way her skin was glowing…_she's a ghost!_

A thrill of fear shot through her. The girl turned to look Sango straight in the eyes. Sango took a step back, her hand clamped on her brother's shoulder, but was too frozen to run. _How fast do ghosts move?_

The girl smiled slightly, then turned her gaze to Kohaku. The breeze tousled her long black hair into her face. Sango tried to scream, but no sound came out.

Suddenly, her fear vanished. She glanced down at her brother, who beamed up at her with mutual contentment. She looked up at the few stars she could see. The ghost was still there, but for some reason it felt like more of a comrade. A wave of elation swept through her as the girl stepped onto the ground, approaching her.

_If I were to die right now…I'd be…hap-_

A swish of air blew unnaturally behind her. She turned to see two large serpent-like beings floating behind and slightly above her.

_I should be afraid…_

They glowed white, like the girl. She felt at once very present yet very far away.

_I think I'm dying…_

The thought should've bothered her more. As the serpents flew above her, the swishing sounds they made felt like lullabies. An odd, white orb floated up out from the ground beneath her feet. Sango closed her eyes and smiled.

"Ah!" It was Kohaku.

Her eyes flew open.

A white orb similar to the one that came from the ground floated out of his chest.

"Kohaku?" Her voice was frantic and thin and tinny-sounding. _I can't die…they're killing Kohaku…they're killing me…_

But she couldn't move. Her skin was glowing. An illuminated, spherical object was being pulled from her chest, too, just like Kohaku's. His, and the one from the ground, were now slowly approaching the girl. She tried to push the orb back into her chest, but her hands went right through it.

From the corner of her eye, Sango saw her brother crumple to the ground.

Disoriented panic flooded to her toes; she could hardly feel it…

_He's dead…I'm going to die…_

In a flash of white, Sango saw some kind of demon jump onto the two serpents. The three crashed to the ground.

Everything went black.

* * *

I'll try to get a new chapter out every four days. I made it with fifteen minutes to spare this time! Can I do it every time? I hope! (Again, not very convincing...)


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